Cons:

In the continuing quest to create the first great console RTS, the development team at EALA has been doing much of the heavy lifting through its newly revived Command & Conquer series. Their latest attempt is Red Alert 3, part of a "side-series" of RTS games that drop the tongue-in-cheek comedy of the main Command & Conquer games in favor of broad comedy and a simple muscular strategic design best suited for quick-and-dirty slugouts. The result is a game that succeeds brilliantly as a comedy and even manages to be an enjoyable strategic challenge despite a merely decent control scheme.

The game's basic premise is typical Red Alert -- that is to say, psychotic. The Soviet Union, on the verge of collapse, uses a time machine in the Kremlin basement to eliminate Albert Einstein from history, removing the person most responsible for their enemy's technological superiority. Returning to the present, the Russians have the Western Allies on the run only to find that their meddling has created a third superpower to contend with -- Japan. The new Empire of the Rising Sun is a techno-fetishist society that mixes nanotechnology with the Bushido code to field armies of cyber-Samurai and giant robots and psychic schoolgirl commandos. Players, of course, can select to play as any of these three powers and try to dump their opponents into the dustbin of history.

The game's cheerful disregard for anything resembling logic or consistent world-building is easily Red Alert 3's strongest characteristic. That starts with the game's unit design. Regardless of the side picked, Red Alert 3's armies are made up of units that are equal parts subtle parody and over-the-top lunacy. The Soviets, for example, field War Bear scouts that are actual armored bears. Their Twinblade attack chopper, on the other hand, is a classic Soviet Hind helicopter that seems to defy physics by flying using two main rotors (for twice the "cool" we assume). The Japanese, on the other hand, field an army filled with things like the King Oni (giant robot juggernauts) and a basic infantry unit that wields a lightsaber while wearing samurai armor.

The amusement factor is increased once battle is joined. Visually, the game is filled with things to delight the eye. Particular favorites include the Soviet Bullfrog personnel carrier that launches infantry units out of a cannon to have them parachute gently to Earth. Every unit actually has its own animation sequence for this. Engineers somersault helplessly through the air while bears fly on their backs with their four legs twitching in panic. Combat dolphins fried by Tesla coils will leave a little skeleton floating in the water for a moment before it sinks. One mission in the single-player campaign actually has the player rescuing troops from a circus.

The game's audio is also worthy of special mention. Score composers Tim Wynn and James Hannigan, along with original Red Alert scribe Frank Klepacki, have outdone themselves by creating a hard-driving late 80's/early 90's metal sound that harks back to the original games while also underscoring the relentless pace of this new edition. The game's music is matched by exceptional voice-over work. Every unit in the game has a number of standard hilarious replies for being clicked and even a few seemingly context-sensitive comments that serve to toss an occasional unexpected surprise at the player. Russian Conscript units, for example, make comments that reflect just how poorly trained they are along with a cheerful gallows humor acknowledgment that their major strategic function is to die in ridiculous numbers. "Promotion, here I come!" is a common exclamation just as a unit is thrown into combat with, say, an Allied tank that's about to squish him.